WEBVTT

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Maria Tallchief.

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Yes?

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Yes.

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You even pronounced it right.

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Maria.

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No, Maria.

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Maria.

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How do other people say it?

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Maria.

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Maria.

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Maria.

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Okay.

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I've been told that when you first came to Chicago, or shortly after you came to Chicago, you and your husband lived in Ruth and Tom Fisher's house in Hubbard Woods. Is that right?

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We used to take Ruth's and Tom's house in Hubbard Woods, charming little old, sort of like an old railroad place, for the summer.

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Our daughter was very small, and I, having lived in New York, where of course every weekend one went to Connecticut or Long Island or someplace, I couldn't imagine staying in Chicago all during the week.

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So Ruth and Tom were very nice and let us open their house while they would be in central pay, and then they would come back and we would leave.

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So it was very nice, you know, we cleaned the house and stayed in it for a while.

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Now, had you known Ruth long before you came to Chicago?

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I had met Ruth Page when I was, I think I was 18 years old. I was with the Ballet Russe du Monte Carlo, and Sergei Denim, who was the director of the company, was a very astute man, especially as far as raising money was concerned.

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And he would go with us on tour, and he invited Ruth to come and choreograph, I think it was the Edgar Allan Poe, The Bells, in which she also danced, and Frankie and Johnny.

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So that's when I met her, that's many, many years ago.

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And did you dance in The Bells or in Frankie and Johnny?

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No, no, actually I didn't know. I can't remember, I remember Ruth dancing in The Bells.

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Frankie and Johnny, she also appeared in with Benny Stone and later with Frederick Franklin.

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No, I was one of the Salvation Army girls who sang. You see, I have perfect pitch.

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I can't sing, but I could get them started, and then I think I was either playing a drum or a tambourine or something, but it was very funny, and we had big pillows.

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They took the three thinnest girls at us in our Salvation Army outfits, sort of singing Frankie and Johnny as they performed.

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So then, and then after that, you went to the New York City Ballet and...

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I was with the Ballet Rouge du Mont-de-Carlo for five years, and then I was married to Balanchine in 1946.

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We went to Paris at the Paris Opera in 1947. We came back from that in August of 47, and that's when he really began Ballet Society, which he had already started a little bit.

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He began very much in earnest, and Ballet Society was the forerunner of the New York City Ballet.

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So that's how it all came about. Lots of hard work later.

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Now, it must have been very difficult for you when you left New York and you came to Chicago.

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You were in a way, I mean, you were considered a great, great ballerina, a great Balanchine ballerina.

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There you were in the middle of New York, and here you were in Chicago.

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I guess one of the first things you did was you danced in La Gioconda at the Lyric, is that right, 1957?

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I don't remember what year.

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1957 was the year.

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I imagine 1957, yes.

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I was here. We had some time off from the New York City Ballet.

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And so Ruth, always very aware of everything going on in the ballet world, said, Maria, wouldn't you like to come and dance in Gioconda?

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And I think I only danced one performance because then I had to get back to the company.

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But I was here. I was Mrs. Henry Passion, and we were very good friends of Tom and Ruth's.

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And so it was a great pleasure to go down to the Opera House.

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That was when Carol Fox was there.

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And I remember, was it in Gioconda? No.

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I'm trying to remember. I remember I danced in Gioconda, and I also danced later in the Orfe.

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Right.

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That really choreographed.

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And I think both times with Kenneth Johnson, who by the way was a wonderful partner.

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Not only was he a wonderful partner, but he had a wonderful sense of humor, which I think he probably still does.

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I love Ken Johnson.

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So I had very pleasant memories.

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I mean, she provided me with a superlative partner, I must say.

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And of course, the background of dancing at the Opera House was like going home to me because I danced there for so many years with the Ballet Russe and with the New York City Ballet.

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Now, it must have been, obviously, Ruth Pager's choreographic style and approach to choreography is very different from George Balanchine's.

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How was it working with her?

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Was it a difficult adjustment for you in any way?

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How would you characterize it?

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Ruth was very interesting.

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The first reaction one has to Ruth is that she is so absolutely dedicated.

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She loves dance.

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This is her whole world is dance.

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And one feels this when one is with her.

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I mean, this is all she talks about.

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She and Tom and Buzzy and I would sit for hours and talk about the dancers here or the painters, the musicians, but all having to do with the dance.

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So, of course, when I danced, I think she tried to do for me what I could do best, but I can remember one time.

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And Ken Johnson loved this.

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It was in Giacondo and it was a certain kind of pirouette.

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And it was very difficult for me because it was en plié with my knee bent.

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And finally she said, Oh, well, you're just too big for that.

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Ken Johnson was wondering.

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Because, of course, Ruth was tiny, but she is tiny.

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You're just too big for that.

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So, of course, that was ever afterward.

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Ken Johnson would say, Well, Maria, you're just too big for that.

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So you enjoyed it working with her?

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Yes, yes, yes.

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It was very interesting.

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And I, it was, you know, beautiful orchestra and wonderful ambiance.

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So it was great pleasure.

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Tell me a little bit about Tom Fisher.

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He was, I know, a very interesting man and I think played a very important role in.

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Oh, Tom Fisher was absolutely incredible with Ruth.

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I mean, I've never seen anyone so devoted.

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The two of them, if one was away for a while,

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they would come back and they'd be sitting together and he would be reading to her

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or she would be reading to him something that they had just read.

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They were so completely devoted couple.

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And I think his whole life was to further Ruth's career.

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And that's very rare.

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I mean, he really, he was, I assume, a brilliant lawyer.

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I don't know.

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Maria, let's stop one second.

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Let's go back to the beginning of the video and let this go by.

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You were saying about.

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Well, he was, I assume, a brilliant lawyer, but he really dedicated his whole life to her.

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Everything, everything he did, every thought was toward helping Ruth in what she wanted to do.

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And what she wanted to do was to dance, first of all, and to choreograph.

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And I have to say, one had to admire Tom Fisher.

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He was, he was an incredible companion for her and a brilliant man, wonderful sense of humor.

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But I'm sure it was very difficult for her when he passed away.

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Creatively, one gets a sense that he wasn't very much involved creatively,

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that it was on the business side and all of the other arrangements where he was.

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Well, I mean, his métier obviously was not in dance or the arts, though he was a great connoisseur.

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So I'm sure his main support was, you know, financial, of course.

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I mean, he helped her in every way he could.

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But I think he went along with her life.

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He enjoyed the people that she attracted.

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I mean, they went on, you know, to Greece with Margot Fontaine and Frederick Ashton, and they had a wonderful time.

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I remember they brought back these marvelous pictures of the four of them posing in Greece.

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And I think Tom was, you know, it was very rare to have a husband so completely devoted and dedicated to what his wife is doing.

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Not that, I mean, I must say I am in much the same position as far as my husband is concerned, but that's very rare.

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It is rare. You're lucky, both of you.

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I have a note that says that one year you came in as a guest artist on one tour of Ruth's Company, which was called at that point, I think, the Lyric Opera.

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It was called Opera Ballet. You danced Camille, was that right?

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I danced. I went for a short time on this tour of Ruth's.

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I think I went to Kansas City and a few other places, again when the New York City Ballet wasn't performing.

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And I danced in Camille, and it was very pleasant. It was very dramatic.

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And of course, this beautiful music. And it was very enjoyable, again with Ken Johnson.

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The kinds of costumes and the kinds of interpretations, the kinds of storytelling, I don't really mean interpretations.

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Ruth always had the most beautiful costumes and the most beautiful scenery.

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I mean, you were surrounded by the best. Anything that Tom Fisher could afford, Ruth had.

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And that's something which is, you know, it's very expensive to be able to have, to afford these kinds of scenery and costumes.

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But she did, and it made it very pleasant. In other words, I wasn't just going and performing in my black leotards.

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And it was very pleasant.

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I understand you also very graciously gave a class for the soloists in the company when they were on the road.

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Oh, I think I gave a class for everybody. It wasn't just the soloists. It was the whole company.

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We never differentiated between who was a soloist. We all feel we all have a lot to learn.

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So class is always for everyone. And I enjoyed that.

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It strikes me as a very democratic kind of world in some ways, the world of dance.

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Well, the world of dance is very democratic because we, you know, is just the one who works the hardest, frankly.

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And if the talent is there to begin with and you have that ability to work and persevere, then those are the ones who succeed.

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And if not, then without the talent, of course, you only become a mediocre dancer and not the great artist that you aspire to be.

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But the work's important.

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Work is the most important of all.

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You have been associated with the man who is certainly the greatest American choreographer, certainly, that we've ever had of all time thus far.

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There's no question about that.

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How would you rank the kinds of things? Are you familiar with Ruth's early work and her Americana Ballets and sort of where she stands?

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What would you say that Ruth's, Ruth Page's contribution has been to American Ballet?

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You know, it's very difficult for me to judge her contribution because when I first met her, I was very young.

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I was still living in a sort of a dream world. That I was there at all was a miracle to me.

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You know, I'm...

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Let's let this go.

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You were saying that you were at first in a dream world.

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I was very young and that's when I first met Ruth.

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And then, of course, later when I danced with her, it was through the opera, so that had nothing to do with Americana.

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But now I read, when I read biographies of Ruth or her book, I realize that she contributed a great deal to American dance.

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I think people like Agnes DeMille are very willing to accept this and say yes.

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Certainly Ruth Page was an integral part of American dance.

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But as far as my own judgment, I really can't say...

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I can understand that.

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Can you remember...

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Ruth is sort of famous for her personal flair.

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I mean, Anna Kisligoff talks about the clothes she wears and she was never without her something like purple gloves or, you know, unusual kinds of clothes and those kinds of things.

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Can you sort of draw a picture for us, for the viewers, of Ruth's personal sort of style and flair in the early years when you first met her?

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Well, I would mainly say that, of course, as I said, when I first met her, I was so busy trying to just keep myself together and learn everything.

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And I was an American in this Russian company.

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So it was, you know, later when I got to know her much better, she had a great style.

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For one thing, she lived a great deal in Paris.

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She dressed at Yves Saint Laurent.

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She would be the one with the wonderful short pants and the cape and the feathers in her hair.

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And she always had the latest clothes, much like Margot Fontaine did.

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Both of them would be dressed at Yves Saint Laurent.

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And I must say, Ruth had an incredible flair.

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She, I always thought she could have been an incredible actress.

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You know, she had this wonderful way of talking and she was so natural.

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And she always reminded me of an Irene Dunn or, you know, that type of woman with big eyes and this marvelous flair.

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And that's all one can say. There it was.

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She was a unique person.

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You said you saw her dance in Frankie and Johnny.

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Do you remember, can you describe how she was as a dancer?

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Well, I don't really remember. I was very busy with my tambourine or drum or something in my big costume.

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I could only see out of the corner of my eye. It was, you know, it was very interesting.

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Of course, it wasn't classical ballet.

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She had on her high heels and the fishnet stockings, if I'm not mistaken.

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And it was very interesting.

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For us, as classical dancers, it was a little different than anything we had ever seen.

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And then not much later along came Agnes DeMille and did Rodeo for us.

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So by that time, we were sort of used to it.

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Are there any other, any anecdotes, other anecdotes about Ruth that you can remember, experiences that you've shared?

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I'm sure my sister has many more.

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My sister and her husband spent many years dancing with Ruth's company.

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They, not only that, they went to Central Pave many times and stayed with Ruth.

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And Margie has wonderful stories about how she and her husband would go down to Central Pave to rehearse.

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And Ruth loved to dance so much.

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Rather than Margie rehearsing, Ruth would rehearse.

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So Margie would be sort of standing there waiting, well, when am I going to get to rehearse?

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But Ruth loved it.

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Here she had this strong, handsome man, my brother-in-law, Georges Cabine.

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And so, oh, she'd fly into his arms.

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I don't know if my sister would be too shy to tell the story, but I'm not.

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I'm glad.

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Laurie, anything?

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Were you aware that Frankie Gianni was the scandal involved with Frankie Gianni in Paris?

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That was later. Much later.

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That was later, in the 50s.

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That was my friend, Helen Kramer, was in it, in Paris.

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So you were scandalous? Were you uncomfortable dancing in it?

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I didn't dance in it. I sang, of all things. I, who can't carry a tune.

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But my friend Helen Kramer was in. She played Nellie Blythe with a blonde wig in Paris.

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So she was there when the whole thing broke loose.

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My standard last question then, is there anything that I haven't asked you that you'd like to tell me about?

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Well, you haven't asked. I think I'm very pleased that this documentary is being done about Ruth. I think it's wonderful.

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Okay. Thank you. That's it.

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Oh, we just need your...

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Thirty seconds of silence, please.